The financial-regulation bill might pass today. Or, if Republicans filibuster and force Reid to file cloture (which requires two days to "ripen" into an actual vote) demand their 30 hours of post-cloture debate, it will pass Saturday. Either way, by the week's end, financial-regulation reform will join health-care reform, the stimulus, tobacco regulation, Ted Kennedy's Serve America Act, and much more in the 111th Congress's outbox. This has been, by far, the most productive Congress in memory. Whether that's a good or a bad thing will depend on your perspective.

Wonkbook includes a range of perspectives today on the financial-regulation bill. In the end, it's both much more and much less than "Wall Street Reform," which is the Democrats preferred term for the bill. In the "more" column, the legislation creates a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will have authority over everything from credit cards to payday lenders, influencing many industries that we tend to think of as Main Street businesses. In the "less" column, the structure and size of Wall Street will, with some exceptions relating mainly to the Volcker rule and derivatives, remain intact.

The biggest transformations will take place among the overseers: A regulatory structure is being created to help regulators detect and avert crises, and, if that fails, respond once they've begun. As part of that, the Federal Reserve is gaining new powers, a systemic risk council is being formed, resolution authority is being created and defined, and shadow banks are being brought out into the sunlight. Will it work? As you'll see, there are a range of opinions on that.

Meanwhile, the Fed is likely to sit on its hands even as its own forecasts say the economy is deteriorating; Reid is trying to broker a deal between utility companies and environmental groups; Democrats' inability to agree on a budget means they won't be able to use budget reconciliation on a jobs bill next year; and Minority Report's tech inches ever closer to reality.

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A 12-page summary (pdf, but worth it) from Deloitte advising its financial clients as to what they can expect from the new law: "Because the new U.S. law is complex, it can be helpful to remind ourselves that its underlying purpose is relatively simple and has two powerful strands: 1. 'De-risk' the financial system by constraining individual organizations' risk-taking activities and capturing a broader set of organizations', including the so-called “shadow” banking system, in the regulatory net 2. Enhance consumer protections."

"As the details of the new law turn into specific regulatory requirements, there will be business impacts across all of financial services, not just banking. Some of those impacts are obvious. For example, the need for “arm’s-length” swap desk affiliates combined with the move from over- the-counter to exchange trading for derivatives, tighter constraints on leverage and risk-taking, and higher liquidity requirements imply lower profit margins in future from those activities."

Despite lowering estimates for economic growth and inflation, the Fed won't pursue additional stimulus, reports Neil Irwin: "Fed leaders expect the jobless rate to be 9.2 to 9.5 percent in the fourth quarter, and to still be 8.3 to 8.7 percent at the end of 2011, both slightly higher than in April forecasts. But they see little threat from inflation, forecasting that prices will rise 1 to 1.1 percent this year...Still, the minutes make clear that Fed leaders still anticipate a continued economic recovery, suggesting that most of the policymakers would still resist any push to take new steps to support growth."

Harry Reid is brokering a climate deal with utility companies and environmental groups, report Darrel Samuelsohn and Coral Davenport: "Majority Leader Harry Reid’s top energy aide, Chris Miller, nudged the small group to the bargaining table earlier this month in the hope they could resolve more than a decade of dispute on Clean Air Act regulations and reach agreement on a first-ever cap on greenhouse gas emissions. So far, sources close to the talks said, the two sides are holding firm in their demands. The power companies want relief from the air pollution rules as a price of entry into negotiations if they are going to accept a mandatory carbon limit that won’t apply to other industries. The environmentalists are saying no."

Democrats are forgoing a budget, and thus losing the chance to use budget reconciliation on a jobs bill in 2011, reports Annie Lowrey: "While the distinction between an enforcement resolution and a full budget is largely technical, there is one crucial difference: Under the enforcement resolution, Democrats can no longer use a parliamentary tactic known as budget reconciliation next year — a process Democrats had hoped might allow them to pass key pieces of legislation, such as a jobs bill, with 51 votes in the Senate, as opposed to the usual 60 needed to overcome a filibuster."

Still to come: FinReg special; The BP cap test faces further delay; a new CEA report says the stimulus has created over three million jobs; the GOP wants Senate hearings on Donald Berwick; and Minority Report's sci-fi tech becomes a reality.

FinReg

Simon Johnson thinks it will fundamentally change American banking: "Just over a hundred years ago, the United States led the world in terms of rethinking how big business worked - and when the power of such firms should be constrained. In retrospect, the breakthrough legislation - not just for the US, but also internationally - was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill, which is about to pass the US Senate, does something similar - and long overdue - for banking."

Harvey Pitt argues it won't help federal regulators: "What was, and is still needed, is a regulatory regime with better flexibility that is more nimble, and able to spot potentially damaging trends before those trends become full-blown crises. Instead, what we have is a bill that makes government less nimble, and more ponderous. The systemic regulator--the FSOC--can override decisions of individual regulators. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency can bog down any other agency by encumbering agency rules or policies."

FinReg vastly improves crisis response, writes Ezra Klein: "By placing derivatives on exchanges and clearinghouses, by creating a systemic risk council, by forcing banks to provide "funeral plans" that explain how to unwind them in the event of a failure, by creating an Office of Financial Research to collect daily data and provide quick analysis on transactions, there's much less chance that a financial crisis would leave regulators totally confused about what's going on, and who owes what to whom."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce remains opposed: "The final bill leaves the regulators with quite some work to do -- 533 regulations, 60 studies and 94 reports. To put this into perspective, Sarbanes-Oxley required 16 new regulations and 6 studies. That’s right, the Dodd-Frank bill is over 30 times the size of SOX."

Daniel Indiviglio looks at how FinReg could either end or encourage the market's preference for mega-banks:http://bit.ly/dhfxXw

What matters is the regulators, writes Tim Fernholz: "Unlike battles in Congress, where organizers have a short time to exert political pressure, rule-making is a war of attrition in the trenches, often over years. Without someone at the top committed to real reform in the agencies, reformers don't have a chance."

The Council of Economic Advisors estimates the stimulus has saved or created three million jobs and will save 500,000 more this year, reports Jared Favole: "The report, which will be fully unveiled by Vice President Joe Biden late Wednesday morning, shows that for every dollar spent under the Recovery Act for renewable energy and other projects the private sector is spending $3, according to a White House official." Read the report (PDF):http://bit.ly/9KUl3Y

China is beginning to adjust to an era of slower growth, report Andrew Batson and Bob Davis: "Higher wages at home and low-wage competition from other countries will make it harder for China, already the world's largest exporter, to maintain rapid export growth. Real-estate bubbles have developed in places like the tropical island province of Hainan, prompting the government to take steps to try to cool those markets so they don't threaten the financial system. The favorable demographics that have supplied manpower for economic growth are changing. ..The labor pool is expected to peak around 2015, and then decline, according to U.N. projections."

Max Baucus is pushing for a permanent extension of some Bush tax cuts, reports David Rogers: "'With today’s budget picture, it’s no longer clear that we can afford large tax cuts for the most well-to-do,' he said, opening a Finance Committee hearing on the subject Wednesday. But in wrap-up comments later, Baucus made clear that he will push for a permanent extension of those provisions that affect middle- and working-class families.. Senate liberals are increasingly agitated, after being hammered by Republicans for months regarding health care and spending. Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, for example, wants an estate levy even stricter than that of the House."

Raghuram Rajan explains how economic inequality fueled the financial crisis: "the political response to rising inequality - whether carefully planned or the path of least resistance - was to expand lending to households, especially low-income households. The benefits - growing consumption and more jobs - were immediate, whereas paying the inevitable bill could be postponed into the future. Cynical as it might seem, easy credit has been used throughout history as a palliative by governments that are unable to address the deeper anxieties of the middle class directly."

Dani Rodrik says a specter of "market confidence" is spooking policymakers: "Few can predict which way market sentiment will move, least of all market participants themselves. Even with hindsight, it is sometimes not clear why markets go one way and not the other. Similar policies will produce different market reactions depending on the prevailing story, or fad of the moment. That is why steering the economy by the dictates of market confidence is a fool’s errand."

David Wessel searches for politically palatable stimulus spending: "There's talk in Washington about a federal highway and surface transportation bill, the one form of spending about which some deficit-phobes are enthusiastic. Or perhaps a public-private infrastructure fund of some sort that would leverage taxpayer money and draw some cash out of corporate coffers, and might help beleaguered state governments at the same time."

David Roberts argues that a deal with utility companies that compromises clean air standards is worse than no action at all: "I've resisted the repeated tendency of greens to say this or that compromise renders the climate bill 'worse than nothing,' but this deal really would do that: it would make the bill worse than nothing..The new Clean Air Act regulations are going to have bigger, faster, and more substantial effects on the power sector than any watered-down utility-only cap-and-trade system. Those regulations will eliminate more pollution, shut down more dirty coal plants, and avoid more greenhouse gases than a utility-only cap-and-trade system."

Andrew Revkin notes a utilities-only carbon cap was first proposed by George W. Bush:http://nyti.ms/aj8bQO

Brad Plumer explains why electric cars aren't catching on: "We're bumping up against a weird psychological fact about American car consumers. As a Better Place official explained to me, market research shows that most drivers want to feel like they can just get into their car and drive cross-country if they have to anytime they want. So even if they never drive more than 40 miles at a time in practice, they still get nervous about buying cars with short ranges. That's why these EPA rules matter."

BP's "integrity test" of the new oil well cap has been delayed yet again, reports Joel Achenbach: "BP said that the leak in what is known as the choke line could be repaired and that its effort to close the damaged well, and shut down the flow of oil permanently, would resume. But video streams from the seafloor showed a chaotic plume of oil and gas continuing to surge from one of the outlets on the 75-ton cap installed earlier this week. It was unclear late Wednesday whether the leak would be a momentary hitch in the much-anticipated 'integrity test' on the well, or if it would put the operation in grave peril."

Senate Republicans appeal to Max Baucus for a hearing on Donald Berwick's appointment to run Medicare and Medicaid, reports Jennifer Haberkorn: "[Republicans on the Finance Committee] argue in a letter to Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) that Berwick needs to answer questions raised about his qualifications -- namely, question they have regarding his statements in support of the British health care system and rationing. The letter was signed by all 10 Republicans on the committee. After the recess appointment, Baucus said he was “troubled” that Berwick didn’t go through the standard nomination process."

Joel Klein, Michael Lomax and Janet Murguia argue against paying to stop teacher layoffs with Race to the Top funds: "A growing coalition of advocates for equity and excellence-- including education and civil rights groups and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle--have united to oppose these cuts. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have offered to work with Mr. Obey to find other ways of funding the Edujobs bill. But unless and until they find a solution together, the Senate should reject the Obey amendment. The choice it proposes--between a reformed educational system and preservation of teachers' jobs--is a fundamentally misguided one. Our students need and deserve both."

George Loewenstein and Peter Ubel argue behavioral economics has become overused: "Take, for example, our nation’s obesity epidemic. The fashionable response, based on the belief that better information can lead to better behavior, is to influence consumers through things like calorie labeling -- for instance, there’s a mandate in the health care reform act requiring restaurant chains to post the number of calories in their dishes..Obesity isn’t a result of a lack of information; instead, economists argue that rising levels of obesity can be traced to falling food prices, especially for unhealthy processed foods."

You guys should stop complaining cuz one the health care we have now isnt as good as it was supposed to be. also the law has just been signed give it a try u guys are too hard on democrats they went to college and we voted for most of these people.so if u want to say u have the right to choose tell that to ur congress men or state official. as for obama people are just tryin to make it look like america made a mistake he has done things to help us and we had a full 8 years of a terrible president and i will be so as happy as ever when a obama fixes bush's mistakes. You can find full medical coverage at the lowest price from http://bit.ly/chE6zp obama has to put up with the wo0rld judging his every move and trying to fix the mess we are in we are lucky anyone wants to be our president. STOP COMPLAINING AND GIVE HIM A BREAK. i wanna see one of yall do what he sas done. some people are just so ignorant.

I've been wondering when this blog would link to that Dan Pink talk. Everyone should see it.

Also, that David Abraham Op-Ed you linked to yesterday was pretty much garbage. It starts off, sensibly enough, by detailing Congress' decision to ignore oil spill disaster warnings while continually voting for oil drilling expansion, and then concludes with this prescription for the problem:

"A good first step would be for environmental groups to hire experts with the relevant private-sector experience to comment on regulatory changes to ensure that they are in the best public interest."

Are you f'ing kidding me? How anyone can get from there to here is an absurdity. Seriously, how do you even graduate high school with such incapacity for logical thought? Yet another blemish on our educational system writing for the Washington Post. I guess we should be thanking you for demonstrating the depth of our American educational failures so concretely.

And now, in spite of the Dan Pink interlude, I'm pissed at Wonkbook for making so irritated this early in the morning. Damned if you do; damned if you don't.

Ezra - Your Senate procedure related to the financial reform bill inaccurate. You write: "if Republicans filibuster and force Reid to file cloture (which requires two days to "ripen" into an actual vote), it will pass Saturday."

In reality, because the Republicans will not enter into a unanimous consent agreement that allows an up-or-down vote, or even a 60-vote threshold, on financial reform, Sen Reid "presented" ("filed" is also a generally accepted term) a cloture motion on Tuesday. This sets up the Senate to vote to terminate debate (invoking cloture). As we all know by now, this vote requires a 3/5 votes.

Once a cloture motion is presented, the motion itself takes "two days to ripen", in colloquial terms. According to Rule XXII's arcane terminology, the motion shall be voted upon "one hour after the Senate meets on the following day but one". That means that the Senate must burn a calendar day between the presenting of the cloture motion and the vote to invoke cloture. Because the motion was presented Tuesday, the cloture vote for the Financial Reform bill is occurring today (Thursday).

If cloture is then invoked, Senate rules allow for a mandatory 30 hours of post cloture debate to consider the measure. During this time, there are a number of limitations regarding the debate and the types of amendments that are in order. Following this 30 hours of post cloture debate, the measure faces a simple majority vote for passage

In practice, and particularly when cloture is invoked toward the end of the work week (and Senators want to head out), Senators see the writing on the wall - that final passage is assured. Therefore, the opposition will yield back the 30 hours of post cloture time to avoid a weekend or early morning vote.

As a result, if cloture is invoked Thursday morning on the financial reform bill, there is a strong chance that the Republicans will yield back the 30 hours and allow for final passage this evening, rather than Saturday.